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NBA Picks

Pick Well Rested Cavaliers -12.5 to Easily Win & Cover vs. 76ers

The Cavaliers are projected to win the East while the 76ers are projected to finish at or near the bottom of the conference. How should we place our NBA picks tonight?

Momentum
The Cavaliers were very solid in a Friday win over the Miami Heat at home. Even without Kyrie Irving, the Cavs were not seriously threatened by the Heat. Miami tried to put Justise Winslow, its new draft pick, on LeBron James, but Cleveland had answers for what the Heat were trying to do. One of the big developments of the early part of the season is that Kevin Love looks a lot stronger and more vigorous than he was at any point last season. Love is going after rebounds and feels a lot less peripheral to what Cleveland is trying to achieve at any one point in time. The Cavaliers look engaged and not bored, a good sign for a team which knows it can cruise through the regular season but still knows it needs to put in the work to accumulate wins, thereby avoiding the 20-20 start it endured a season ago.

The 76ers are coming off a painful 99-71 loss at home to the Utah Jazz on Friday. It is true that the Jazz are a very strong defensive team, one which is going to make a lot of other weak teams, especially in the Eastern Conference, look very bad. In fact, Utah limited the Indiana Pacers to just 76 points on Saturday night in Indianapolis, so the Sixers were not alone in getting victimized by Utah’s size and length, with Rudy Gobert patrolling the middle of the paint. However, scoring 71 points is particularly futile for an NBA game, and allowing the Jazz to score 99 at this early point in the season does not represent Philadelphia’s best effort on defense. The Sixers must upgrade their game quickly, or the month of November and the season itself could spin wildly out of control.

Matchup
With this matchup, the Sixers have to somehow find a way to score. Cleveland developed into a very good defensive team in the playoffs last spring, but the Cavaliers aren’t going to play Matthew Dellavedova 40 minutes. They’re not going to radically restructure their lineup to play defense. They will want to balance the need for defense with the need for offense, so the Sixers will need to find a way to piece together 95 points and hope the Cavs have an off night shooting long-distance shots. The Sixers have a lot of bigs and can crowd the paint. They need to turn LeBron into a jump shooter and hope he’s inaccurate.

What’s The Pick?
The NBA Odds started with Cleveland as a 12.5-point choice, and that line has remained in place. You’re not going to see bettors exhibit confidence in the 76ers, and why should anyone? Cleveland has had two days to rest. The Cavs should roll here, so take them with your NBA Picks.